We'll begin our concentration practice by choosing a posture that we'd like to practice in.
You could be seated,
You could be standing,
You could even be laying down.
Of the choices,
The invitation is to choose the posture that best supports you in this particular moment.
Once you've settled into your posture,
Closing your eyes or lowering your gaze,
I know that whenever you have options,
Choosing what's going to be most supportive for you.
The eye closing or lowered gaze is helpful to minimize visual distraction.
As we come into this practice and this moment,
We can invite our bodies to soften,
Creating space on your forehead,
Unclenching your jaw,
And letting your hands be at rest wherever is most comfortable for them to be placed.
Bring awareness to your posture.
Seeing if you can hold a position that allows you to be both alert and at ease at the same time.
This concentration practice will help to increase focus,
Stability of the mind,
And we'll do that by picking a single object to rest our attention on.
I'm going to give you a couple options.
The first option would be your breath.
You can notice your breath in the form of sensation.
There's a couple places where you can feel sensation of your breath,
The expanding and contracting of your belly.
Another spot might be the rising and falling of your chest,
And then another spot would be the sensation of airflow through your nostrils.
You could also label your breath with the word in on the inhale and out on the exhale.
Those are your breath focus options.
Another option would be your sense of hearing and sound.
With this object simply noticing the sounds around you in your space,
You may also notice sounds in my space.
You might also notice no sounds or simply the sound of silence.
If you choose to work with sound,
You simply pay attention like you were listening to music,
Noticing without getting carried away.
Sometimes we can hear things and think,
Oh what a beautiful sound,
Or oh what an annoying sound.
Seeing if we can not go into judging the different sounds and simply taking it all into our experience,
Recognizing that all of it belongs.
Then the last option I'll give would be using your sense of sight.
This would.
.
.
You could do this with your eyes closed or open.
If you open your eyes,
Keeping a soft gaze,
If you have a window to look out of,
You could notice maybe nature or something outside.
And if you're completely inside,
Resting your gaze on maybe a piece of artwork or something else in your space that's pleasant or neutral.
If your eyes are closed,
You can perhaps still see perhaps different shapes and levels of light coming through and you can rest your attention on that.
These are three options.
It's certainly not an exhaustive list.
If you heard all these and thought,
Oh I don't even know which one to go with,
You can just pick one.
If there's an option that creates discomfort or triggers something unpleasant inside of you,
I would say to choose one of the other objects to focus on instead.
And this concentration practice is really just as simple as keeping your attention on the object you've selected.
And if you haven't already noticed,
Your mind will wander and remember that that's normal and that you're not doing anything wrong.
Your only job is to notice when your mind has wandered and then gently bring it back to the object you've selected.
And each time you do that,
You're practicing mindfulness.
Something else you can pay attention to when your mind wanders is the quality and tone of your inner voice.
Is there a harsh critic inside that's whipping you to get back to your object?
Or might you find yourself spacing out and forgetting where you are?
See if you can find middle ground,
Bringing kindness and curiosity to your experience.
And remembering that there's no failing in this practice.
You're simply witnessing what occurs and coming back.
You'll have about the next six minutes in silence.
And that'll bring us to a close.
Very good.
You can gently release the object you've been focused on.
Let's be near the end of this meditation.
Remembering that whether your mind wandered five times or five hundred times,
That one is not better than the other.
If it wandered more and you brought it back more,
You can just think of that as having done more reps at the gym.
Just strengthening your concentration.
As we return,
Noticing what your mind and body feel like in this moment.
And then making your way back,
Wiggling your toes,
Fingers,
If your eyes were closed,
Allowing them to open and arriving.
